Know what's really in your food.

A food scanner app reads a product barcode or its printed ingredient list and tells you what is inside: every additive by name and E-number, declared allergens, insect-derived ingredients, nutrition per 100 g and country of origin. FoodCheckr does both barcode and label scanning, and adds an AI report explaining what the ingredients mean for you.

It checks for insect-derived ingredients that are declared on the label: carmine (E120), shellac (E904), beeswax (E901), and whole-insect powders such as house cricket and mealworm, including under their Latin names. No phone app can chemically test food, and any app claiming otherwise is overselling. What it does is match every declared ingredient against the full alias list, faster and more reliably than you can by eye.

Four entries: E120 carmine, from crushed cochineal scale insects. E904 shellac, resin from the lac bug, usually labelled as confectioner’s glaze. E901 beeswax. And E236–E238, formates associated with ants although industrially synthesised. E120 and E904 are the ones you will meet.

Carmine is made from crushed cochineal insects. It is not vegan or vegetarian, and IFANCA, JAKIM, MUI and ESMA classify it as haram, so it is excluded from halal certification by those bodies. It hides under cochineal, carminic acid, Crimson Lake, Natural Red 4 and CI 75470.

Switch to ingredient scan and photograph the printed ingredient list instead. It reads the text directly off the packaging, so it works whether or not the product has ever been catalogued, which is how you check supermarket own-brands, imported products and anything newly launched.

It identifies the ingredients that need checking: gelatin (E441), carmine (E120), shellac (E904) and source-ambiguous additives like E471, so you know exactly what to ask about. It cannot certify a product as halal, because certification depends on sourcing, slaughter method and production-line separation, none of which appears on the label. The app is localised in Arabic.

Yes. Alpha-gal support was added in version 2.1.2. Because alpha-gal is a carbohydrate rather than a protein, it is not a declarable allergen, so nothing is emphasised on the label and every ingredient has to be read. Scanning surfaces gelatin, lard, tallow, broth, magnesium stearate and other mammalian derivatives without you having to hunt for them.

Scan both, then open the Compare tab. You get sugar, fat, calories, alcohol and protein side by side with colour-coded bars, and a verdict naming which product is healthier and why. It replaces the per-100 g arithmetic nobody does while standing in an aisle.

No. This is the most persistent myth in food labelling. E300 is vitamin C, E100 is turmeric extract, E440 is apple pectin. The E-number system is an index of approved additives, not a list of suspicious ones. What matters is which additive it is, which is what a scan tells you.

Scanning barcodes and ingredient labels is free and needs no account. Optional in-app purchases unlock extended AI analysis. Barcode lookup and AI analysis need a connection; your saved scan history stays available offline. The app is iPhone-only and requires iOS 15 or later.